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Assembly

Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 3:39 am
by rwyeth
With the governor spring in hand, I was able to make a little more progress this evening! And, I am happy to say that the dial mechanism seems to be working well. I was concerned about trying to mate the two boards and while keeping all of the gears in place; but, they mated flawlessly (following Justine's suggestions). Putting the bell mallet in place, however, proved to be a challenge. I ended up loosening the one screw holding the two boards together and prying them apart slightly to help in slipping the mallet assembly into the slot. Oh, and my hot glue didn't hold on the OLED display. But, it seems to be coming together! I hope it works...

Re: Assembly

Posted: Tue May 23, 2023 2:02 am
by rwyeth
When assembling the antenna, don't get too much glue under the antenna board. I was too liberal with the hot glue; then, the outer antenna enclosure wouldn't fit. And, in trying to separate the antenna board from the inner enclosure, I managed to damage the board...just another minor setback.

Re: Assembly

Posted: Fri May 26, 2023 2:34 pm
by justine
Great job with the assembly! Glad the rotary is working well. Yes it took quite some trial and error to get the process just right.

The bell mallet has been a sticking point for me too and I have a design change to the mechanical parts coming along in CAD. I won't have new injection molded parts made for a while though so for now I think we just deal with it.

The hot glue under the OLED isn't actually necessary... I use it to hold the display in place until final assembly, after which point it's retained mainly by surrounding mechanical parts.

I'll revise the instructions re. the antenna enclosure too. Putting glue under the antenna PCB isn't actually necessary wither if one can be careful enough gluing around the edges, but neither hot glue nor CA glue is right here and I didn't want to specify yet a third glue. In the future, another possible design revision would be to put mating bosses in the enclosure with matching cutouts in the antenna board, as permitted by the RF situation.

On the antenna: If you look at how the enclosure is shaped as related to the board, you might wonder what I was thinking. Indeed, the injection molded parts were made for an earlier version of the antenna that used a much larger SMD antenna element that extended the length of the enclosure near the thicker edge. It was rather lucky that I could get the new antenna PCB deign to fit at all, and indeed I had to go with the thinnest PCB material I could get to make it work, which is why that board on it's own is somewhat flexible, and probably contributed to your antenna element popping off.

Long story short: I'll send you a new board.

Re: Assembly

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:59 am
by rwyeth
The new antenna parts went together without any issue once I knew that I needed to be careful of the thickness of the hot glue. What glue would you recommend here if not hot glue nor CA?
Robert

Re: Assembly

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2023 1:43 am
by justine
Epoxy is always my go-to if not one of those.